“I wanted to speak to you in person.”
Eve picked up a rag to wipe her hands.
“I’m almost done! I was going to invite you over to raise a glass when we’d finished.”
She gestured round the studio—by a trick of light you could almost believe that it was the glowing canvases, not the setting winter sun, that burnished the room and turned the canal outside into a river of blood. The watercolours and photographs were neatly laid out on the table and the six sealed herbaria were lined up, side by side, against the east wall like display cases in a jewellery store. Only one watercolour, one canvas and one herbarium to go.
But Hans’s glance seemed perfunctory and impatient. He wasn’t here to appraise her work.
“It’s the Gerstein,” he said. “They’ve cancelled the retrospective.”
“What?” Eve balled the paint rag in her fist. “They can’t do that!”
“Well, they’ve done it.”
“Why?”
He flung a newspaper across the table. “You’ve not seen it?”
The paper was open on the unmistakable Kiš portrait, Girl with a Flower, spread across two pages. Next to it was a grainy snapshot of a young man, bare-chested on a beach, hair tousled by a sea breeze. Theo. The headline read “VILE PREDATOR KILLED MY BROTHER.” Under it, in smaller type, were the words “Famous artist’s muse was paedophile, says dead DJ’s family.”
Eve reached out to steady herself against the table. Esme had taken her revenge. And there she was, the grieving sibling, photographed for the article, beefy arms folded confrontationally in a button-down shirt. Under her picture was the caption: “Eve Laing destroyed innocent Theo, says IT consultant Emmet.”
There were two more pictures—one of Eve and “current toy boy, Luka Marlow,” flanking Wanda at the Hayward, the other of Eve smiling and apparently serene on Kristof’s arm at the Sigmoid opening. The caption read: “In happier times: alleged child abuser Laing with her estranged husband, millionaire architect Kristof Axness.”
“Absurd!” Eve said, tossing the paper back towards Hans. “Malicious nonsense. What’s this got to do with my New York retrospective?”
“The official line is that it doesn’t fit the Gerstein’s schedule any more.”
Eve was suddenly conscious of Luka’s presence.
“That’s not good enough,” she said to Hans. “What are they playing at? They can’t just scrap the show like that. How could they have got their scheduling so wrong?”
Hans shook his head. “The scheduling is a fiction. They’ve pulled your show. Because of this.” He pointed at the newspaper. “There’s the Twitter business, too…”
“What Twitter business?”
“About you and…” Hans nodded in Luka’s direction.
There was contempt for her as well as Luka in that nod.
“Luka’s his name. Come on, Hans. Twitter? Really? Another meaningless moral panic. Since when did the art world get all puritanical about extramarital affairs?”
She looked over and saw that Luka was back at the camera, filming their exchange.
“Well, it’s not just about him, is it?” continued Hans. “There’s the dead boy. Theo Novak.”
She felt a rising panic.
“But that was decades ago, when we…when I…knew him.”
She sensed the camera implacably recording her confusion.
“Turn that damned thing off,” she told Luka. “Aren’t there some supplies you should be getting?”
“Sure.”
He took his jacket and left the studio.
“Eve,” said Hans, “you know I’ve never pried into your personal life.”
“It would be a bit rich if you did, Hans. I’ve heard the rumours. The cottaging, the heath, the clubs…”
He winced. When he next spoke there was a brusqueness in his voice.
“No one’s interested in me,” he said. “And besides, I was always careful to keep within the boundaries of the law.”
“This is ridiculous, Hans. It was half a lifetime ago. I haven’t seen him for years. I was a young woman, lonely, hurt by my husband’s infidelity. He was a sweet, loving boy. It was real passion for both of us. Different times.”
“That’s not the line they’re taking on social media. Or the press. They’re laying responsibility for his death at your door.”
“Theo became a junkie because of the crappy youth culture. Drugs killed him. Our brief fling, two decades ago, had nothing to do with it.”
Hans sighed. “I’m afraid the world takes a rather different view. In this new climate, there’s no statute of limitation on sexual misdemeanour.”
“I can always deny it,” she said. “They can’t prove it. It’s my word against his. And he’s dead.”
“Your word against his sister’s—his brother’s.”
“Esme? That little freak?”
“That little freak, as you call him, knows how to orchestrate a social media campaign. It’s global, thanks to your husband’s profile. Your daughter’s been spreading the word, too.”
Eve shook her head. So this Oedipus was a woman, intent on murdering her mother.
Hans walked towards the door: “I’m sorry, Eve.”
“Can’t you do something?” she called after him. “Persuade the Gerstein to reconsider?”
“They’ve moved fast. Damage limitation. They’ve already rescheduled. They’re running a new immersive piece by Wanda Wilson, a pop-up curtain-raiser for her summer Artist on the Edge show.”
Eve’s unconvincing laughter echoed in the silence of the studio.
“A video walk-through of her latest colonoscopy? With music by Satie?”
Hans turned back to her. He wasn’t smiling. “Wanda Wilson is the greatest artist of her generation.”
“You don’t believe that, Hans, I know you don’t. Tell me you don’t believe that.”
He opened the door, letting a pale strip of light fall across the gathering gloom of the studio.
“I’ve got a lawyer weighing up your options but I don’t fancy your chances.”
“Our chances.”
“Yours. You’re on your own with this one, Eve.”
Once Hans had left, she switched on all the lights, found her phone and rang Ines Alvaro’s number. It went straight through to voicemail. She left a message asking her to call. What else could she do but return to work? Luka too, when he came back from his convenient errands. He didn’t ask about Hans’s visit and kept his distance. He moved the camera tripod and they tidied the studio, cleaned the brushes, muller and grinding slab, and set out the powdered pigments in preparation for the concluding sequence.
Red. They should have been exultant. Instead, the studio seemed as quiet and heavy with sorrow as a funeral parlour. Her thoughts returned to that other studio, years ago, with its tall sash windows letting in the northern light, chilling her naked body sprawled at Florian’s feet.
As she took comfort in the rites of process, sharpening pencils, laying out watercolours, putting brushes in a jar of fresh water, Luka filmed her.
Now she could begin. She selected a pencil—3B, a balance between softness and precision. Bent over the vellum, she began her preparatory sketch for the Ricinus watercolour. It was hard to focus and remain purposeful without asking: “What is the point? Who is this for?”
She began to resent Luka’s tiptoeing silence and the pitiless scrutiny of the camera and snapped at him: “Turn it off!”
He mimed an apology, hands up, and went back to the herbarium.
“So,” he called to her in a bright shot at conciliation, “tell me about this one?”
He was waving a branch of Ricinus, its twin scarlet pompoms grotesquely festive. He was trying to lift her mood, or at least to distract her. Perhaps this was what she needed. As
she reached for the herbal manual he set up the camera and tripod next to the herbarium and adjusted the focus.
“ ‘Ricin. The deadliest of them all…’ ” she read. “ ‘Used by the Soviets to assassinate exiled dissidents.’ ”
Oddly, she read, it was also said to have been used by Cleopatra to whiten her eyes. Another dicey beauty regime.
He whistled, releasing the plant into the formalin with comic reverence. She returned to her watercolour, teasing out the seed capsule’s scrotal delicacy with a fine brush.
Her phone rang and, in her haste to answer, she trailed drops of vermilion all over the watercolour. Blotting desperately at her work with a rag, she saw the call wasn’t from Ines, but from Hans. He must be feeling guilty about their sharp exchange: it had all been a mistake; the Gerstein board members had changed their minds; the retrospective was going ahead.
But Hans was sombre.
“No. Their decision is final.”
There was worse. The offers for the Poison Florilegium had been withdrawn.
“That’s it, I’m afraid,” he said. “And there’s growing pressure on the Dallas Museum to take down the Urban Florilegium.”
“Pressure? Who from?”
“The Twittersphere…An editorial in the New York Times…”
Into her stunned silence, he sounded a tentative note of hope.
“I did receive one offer,” he said. “From Wanda Wilson. Her people have been enquiring about using images from Rose/Thorn.”
Eve squeezed the sodden red rag in her hand. What did he mean by “using images”?
“Reproduction rights. She wants to use them in her Gerstein show, an ‘art banquet’—an extended feast, with music, food and wine—open to spectators…”
“They’re trading the Poison Florilegium for that? What’s it got to do with Rose/Thorn anyway?”
“She wants to print the images on the tableware—plates and cups, drapery.”
Eve threw the rag across the table.
“Hans, I’m an artist, not an interior designer. You know that. Wanda knows that.”
He ignored her sarcasm. “She says—Wanda Wilson’s people say—Rose/Thorn will be an integral part of the work.”
“You’re telling me my best hope is a joint show, featuring printed reproductions of my old work, alongside a new piece of nonsense from Wanda Wilson?”
“Not exactly. Your work would be what they describe as an adjunct—an accessory—to Wanda’s show.”
Eve looked over at Luka. Was he listening to this? He was at the computer, editing footage.
“How long have we worked together, Hans? Twenty, twenty-five years? This year, we had the show at the Sigmoid. Only a few weeks ago we were talking about potential buyers for the new Florilegium—the Middle East…Russia…China…And now you’re honestly advising me that my only hope is to help out in Wanda Wilson’s immersive restaurant experience?”
“Eve, you don’t seem to understand the gravity of your situation.” There was exasperation in Hans’s voice. “Your reputation is in tatters and the value of your work has plummeted. Whatever animus you have towards Wanda Wilson, this is your best—perhaps your only—chance. It’s a generous offer. If I were you, I would snatch at an invitation to play a part in her new show. It’s a serious piece of work that’s already attracting international press attention.”
“You’re not me, Hans. If you were, you’d know I’d rather die in obscurity than join Wanda Wilson’s circus.”
“I’ve given my advice—”
She cut him off. It was all over with Hans.
Numb with fury, she never wanted to see him again. She would walk away; she was good at walking away—from her parents, her brother, from Kristof, Nancy…One step and then the next. Repeat. Until you’re out of sight and earshot. She’d turned her back on Theo, too. It seemed easy, measuring the distance in footsteps, a leisurely stroll towards the horizon. Easy at the time.
She’d also turned her back on Florian, though that had cost her more. She’d had to cut him out of her life like a canker, anaesthetised by rage.
She returned to her drawing but it was impossible; her hand was shaking. Maybe it was all over with her too.
27
The wind has got up and she’s alerted by a sudden movement—a low silhouette is slinking from a side street towards her. She stops; it’s a fox, dragging its flapping prey.
A night bus flashes past, each lit window framing an Edward Hopper profile—thumbnail studies of urban loneliness. The fox walks into the road, illuminated by the bus’s tail lights, and Eve sees that the quarry is not a fatally wounded puppy or kitten struggling in its last throes, but a bag of rubbish plundered from a nearby dustbin. She puts up her collar against the wind and walks quickly on. The past is no comfort. She’s not outrunning her thoughts. Nor is she hurrying back to the studio. She’s a woman pursued. Pursued by her future.
* * *
—
Half an hour after Hans’s phone call she opened a bottle of wine and turned on the radio. She returned to her drawing while Luka attended to the camera and cleaned the studio. The news was of refugee convoys, more catastrophic floods, deadly wildfires and impending economic doom. But nothing could quell her thoughts of that last time with Florian, when he’d banished his visitor, knocked on the bathroom door and asked Eve to come and resume her pose. As she stretched out on the studio floor for him she noticed that a small canvas—30cm by 30cm, less than half the size of her portrait—had been brought out from the stacks against the wall and was leaning against the sofa. She stared at it absently. The painting was an incomplete nude study of what appeared to be a Neanderthal fertility goddess in a state of abandon, her torso ringed by bands of subcutaneous fat, splayed legs revealing the frilled viscera of sex organs, her dark hair a wiry halo. It was repellent…
By the time Luka opened a second bottle, Eve had somehow managed to complete the watercolour. He returned to the herbarium and set up the video camera. She began to organise the brushes and pigments for tomorrow’s assault on the final canvas. She knew what was required but she couldn’t unseat the question that now squatted like a malevolent demon over the enterprise: what was all this for?
Luka seemed to read her mind. He turned on the camera and asked: “Do you ever wonder what all this is about? I mean, what’s it saying? Who actually likes this stuff ? What’s the point?”
Was he being hostile or just obtuse? If he was looking for a confrontation, he could have one. It would at least take her mind off the chasm yawning at her feet.
“If you want to leave, there’s the door,” she said. “I’ll get on fine without you. You might find it tricky, though, without the salary or the status. What’s your future? A dazzling career copying French Impressionists? Designing greetings cards? Pet portraiture?”
He kicked the herbarium and the plants shuddered in their oily bath. He was angry too. But he knew she was right. He had come this far. He was as committed to the project as she was. He had to see the Florilegium through to the end. Perhaps it would be their end, too, but they could address that later. They must work now.
Slowly, he measured out the pigment and mixed the colour. They worked at the canvas in sullen silence, side by side. By the time they were too exhausted to carry on, they’d almost finished half the Ricinus painting. Even as enemies, they worked well together.
It must have been 4 a.m. when he made up a bed on the studio couch. She went to the bedroom alone and woke just before dawn, three and a half hours later, wrecked by lack of sleep and too much wine. She felt an undertow of fear—about Luka, about Kristof, Florian, Theo, her reputation, everything—but she had to get back to the canvas. Another day would do it. Then she could collapse, take stock and decide her next move.
Luka was already up, sitting at the computer, editing footage. He made coffee and wen
t to grind more red pigment in silence. When she was ready to start on the painting he returned to the herbarium and set up the video camera next to it, angling it on her. She leaned close into the grain of the canvas, her brush clotted with glutinous carmine. The spiky red seed capsules were so hard to render—they had a party piñata quality, but in another light, they suggested the lethal flails of medieval warfare. The colour wasn’t helping. On the canvas it was flat, lacking depth and luminosity.
He was dropping the last of the Ricinus seed capsules and leaves into the herbarium’s preserving fluid when Eve called to him.
“Can you take another look at this mix?” she asked. “The colour seems a bit off.”
It was as if he hadn’t heard. He continued to drop the plant parts in the herbarium, one by one, watching, as if in a trance, each twirling, rippling, slow-motion fall.
“I said, can you do this red again? The mix isn’t right.”
He looked up, a strange smile on his face, and didn’t move.
“Hans was right,” he said. “You should listen to him.”
“I don’t go to Hans for advice. How much of that phone conversation did you hear?”
“Enough to know that you’re crazy to turn down a chance to take part in Wanda Wilson’s new show.”
“If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. Now shut up and get on with your work.”
He wasn’t finished with her.
“It’s a one-off New Year appetiser for next summer’s big multi-venue relational show that everyone’s talking about. Should be fun. There’ll be round-the-block queues, a buffet provided by the most fashionable chef in Manhattan, themed tableware, dinner jazz. She’s calling it Best Eaten Cold/Revenge.”
Eve looked at him in disbelief. The unkind light of the grey winter’s morning stripped him of his beauty, giving him the look of a gleeful cadaver. She turned away and picked up her brush. It was shaking in her trembling hand. Close up, staring at the warp and weft of canvas showing through the lurid red, she thought again of that small, unfinished portrait in Florian’s studio, of how her eyes had narrowed, sharpening her gaze, and moved from the ragged wound of vagina and labia to the crude blur of facial features framed by a dark fright wig. A moment of mild curiosity was followed by a shock of recognition: it was Wanda. Unmistakably.
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